Townsville City Council, through the Smart Precinct NQ, brought two innovative education initiatives, Future Anything and the Australian School of Entrepreneurship, to the city yesterday.
MORE NEWS>>>
• Anthony and Tania Smith fined $7000 for mistreatment of horses
• Vote now for North Queensland’s best pub
• Father and son convinced they spotted a black panther at Paluma
Students from seven regional high schools participated in the Big Ideas Youth Challenge at the Queensland Country Bank Stadium.Students from Thuringowa State High School won the $3000 Global Impact Award for their business idea of a “helper book” app to help young people experiencing domestic violence.Mayor Jenny Hill said the council wanted to inspire young people to think about how they could develop skills for the future.

“The reality is programming, the development of apps, looking at problems in the community and how they might be able to solve it, that’s what this is all about,” Cr Hill said.“Smart Precinct is not just about adults coming up with ideas. If you look at Facebook and some of the apps that are out there, they were all developed by people in their teens and early 20s. Someone out there could be the next Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates.”Smart Precinct chief operating officer Nicole Lucas said the Big Ideas Youth Challenge was an opportunity to teach young people about entrepreneurship.Ms Lucas said the one-day program was delivered by specialist education group Future Anything whose school-based Activate entrepreneurship program would operate in North Queensland high schools next year, partly funded by Smart Precinct NQ.“What we are trying to do is get young people excited about entrepreneurship,” Ms Lucas said.

“Entrepreneurs are quite agile, they can solve problems really quickly, they see opportunities in the market and they are job creators.”Smart Precinct NQ managing director Matt Steine said programs like this had not been as accessible for young people in Townsville as in the capital cities.“It’s really important that, with the investment that the council has made to bring partners like Future Anything and the Australian School of Entrepreneurship to Townsville, we make these things accessible to Townsville youth,” Mr Steine said.“We look forward to doing another event like this next year, hopefully, with even more young people and more ideas.”

THE IDEAS
• A jobs app for young people aged between 13 and 18 that can also help with transport and safety• A mobile game similar to Pokemon Go with a kindness leaderboard that gives cafe vouchers as prizes for the best inspirational messages• A recycled plastic drone with solar panels that collects people’s plastic waste when they subscribe to the app• An app that uses students’ grades at school to suggest a future career they might enjoy.• A clothing brand that promotes gender equality for women with funds raised to go to local designers• An app that tracks water use throughout the household and focused on young people to limit their shower time• An app for a disguise journal or helper book that teenagers can use to communicate with others about domestic violence



Source link